FEMA Courses

As always, before we get into what the FEMA courses are, how you can use them and all the neat stuff they allow you to do... a word of caution must come first. You need to check with your student advisor about transferring FEMA courses before potentially wasting your time and/or money. Not doing so will almost certainly lead to frustration and you being upset. Not all colleges accept them and even the ones that do sometimes change the rules on the number and type they will allow. Be warned - If you angrily write me that I have wasted your time/money by recommending FEMA courses, I will merely quote this paragraph in the reply. :P

Secondly, please read the entire page. FEMA courses are a confusing subject for many and I've done my best to answer any questions that you may have. There are bits and pieces of those answers scattered all throughout the page, with the "How to get there" at the end. This was done on purpose. Skipping directly to the end before you fully understand the limitations could be a costly mistake.

With that out of the way, let's get to the good stuff!

What are FEMA Courses?

Death by acronym time! - FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has an educational division. The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) and National Fire Academy (NFA) have been around since the early 1940's. They actually purchased a women's college back in the late 1970's as a place to educate government officials (male and female) and members of the public on a variety of Emergency Management topics. The great news? These courses are free to take and can equal college credit!

What courses do they offer?

This is what drives most people crazy about the whole FEMA course process - It's bloody impossible to find a reliable list of which courses will count and where. That's because it seems to change so often. What you see here is valid to the best of my knowledge. I cannot stress the fact enough that you need to contact the school before you take these to confirm that the below is still the case. I've made a downloadable text file with the below information so you can use it for planning. Feel free to download a copy.

FEMA courses accepted by Thomas Edison State College (worth one credit)

IS-1 Emergency Program Manager: An orientation to the Position

IS-3 Radiological Emergency Management

IS-5.a An Introduction to Hazardous Materials

IS-7 A Citizen's Guide to Disaster Assistance

IS-8.a Building for the Earthquakes of Tomorrow: Complying with Executive Order 12699

IS-10 Animals in Disaster - Module A Awareness and Preparedness

IS-11.a Animals in disaster - Module B Community Planning

IS-15.b Special Event Contingency Planning for Public Safety Agencies

IS-111 Livestock in Disasters

IS-120.a An Orientation to Community Disaster Exercises

IS-139 Exercise Design

IS-208.a State Disaster Management

IS-230.a Principles of Emergency Management

IS-235 Emergency Planning

IS-240 Leadership and Influence

IS-241 Decision Making and Problem Solving

IS-242 Effective Communication

IS-244 Developing and Managing Volunteers

IS-271 Anticipating Hazardous Weather & Community Risk

IS-275 The EOC's Role in Community Preparedness, Response and Recovery Activities

How does it work?

It's pretty simple. You review the course material and then take an online, un-proctored exam. Provided you pass and have the grade sent to a regionally accredited college that accepts them, you've just earned one college credit!

What's the catch?

You knew there had to be one, right? :P Well, there are actually three catches.

The first is that these FEMA courses, depending on your school, are almost always applied as either general elective credits or Applied Professional credits. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you need X number of Arts and Sciences credits to get your degree, these likely won't fill that requirement.

The second catch is that the FEMA courses themselves are not evaluated by the American Council on Education (ACE). This means that many colleges will not accept them. A way around this limitation is to get the courses evaluated by a school such as Frederick Community College (FCC) which then assigns them to one of its own courses. You get credit for the course at FCC, which being a regionally accredited college, allows you to transfer those credits to other regionally accredited colleges. More on this in the next section.

The third catch is that these credits, like CLEP and DSST's, needs to apply to your degree. This is why I harp so much on checking with your advisor. Get the assurance in writing that they will accept each course before you take it.

How much does it cost?

For FEMA courses, it pays to be a TESC student. Thomas Edison accepts these credits directly from FEMA so there is no hefty re-transcribing cost associated with funneling them through another school. Once you take the courses, just get the certificates sent to TESC and they'll appear on your transcript at no cost, just like any other transfer credit.

For other colleges like Excelsior and Charter Oak State College, they can still be a good deal, but they're going to cost you a bit of money to get them on a transcript. For those students, you'll need to run them through a school like Frederick Community College. FCC will charge you $76 per credit hour you're trying to transfer. So if you have 30 credits worth of FEMA courses you'd like transcribed, you're looking at around $2280.

I know that sounds like a lot, but let's put it into perspective - You just killed a year of college credits for under $2500. That's pretty darn competitive when individual classes can run you $300-$500 for only 3 credits! There's another option out there with Clackamas Community College, which we'll cover further below.

Whether you're a TESC student (great value) or a student at another institution (good value), FEMA courses are definitely something to think about. So how do you actually take the FEMA courses and get your credits? I'll walk you through both scenarios (TESC and other) below.

How to take a FEMA Course

The first part is the same for everyone:

1. Contact your student advisor and ask them which FEMA courses they will accept. If they haven't heard of FEMA courses, try referring to them as courses from EMI (Emergency Management Institute). If they still haven't heard of them, then you can refer them the EMI website. If you're going to one of the Big 3, this shouldn't be an issue.

3. Find the courses that you've confirmed will be accepted (you did check, right?). For this example, we're going to use IS-1 which seems to be a popular one. - IS-1 Emergency Manager

4. If you look in the top right hand of the screen, you'll see the "Download Materials" link. Go ahead and do so. Most are either in PDF or Word format. Just grab all of the links you see on the page that opens. Some of them have a single zip file with all of the pages combined. Obviously go for that one if available.

5. Read through the material. The subjects are pretty interesting in a "What to do when the world is falling apart" kind of way.

6. Time for the final exam! Download the copy of the final exam questions. Using your knowledge of what you've learned and the handy "Ctrl-F" find tool for anything you need to look up in the course materials, answer all of the questions on the downloadable final exam. Save your answers.

7. Once you've done so, you can then take the online exam and plug in the answers quickly. Of course you could skip the previous step, but this ensures you have all the time you need to find any questions you aren't sure about.

8. If you've passed, you should receive an EMail at the address you gave within 24 hours telling you the good news. If you didn't pass, try the test again. There's no limit or penalty for doing so.

9. So you passed! Congrats! Take the next one on your list and keep track of the ones you've already taken! You'll need that list later.

10. Fast forward to the end and we've taken all the FEMA courses we need to. Now we need to turn the courses into credits.

How to get credit for your FEMA courses

If you are a TESC student, it's a straightforward process. You'll just need to get those credits from EMI to TESC. We can do this by filling out a transcript form at the EMI website and have all the completed courses sent to TESC. They'll show up on your transcript or credit bank as they're received and approved. Simple as promised.

If you are not a TESC student, it's going to be a little more complicated and expensive. Let's say you go to Excelsior College. Since the FEMA courses aren't ACE evaluated, Excelsior won't take them straight from EMI. It has to go through another regionally accredited school first. To do that, we have two choices, Frederick Community College and Clackamas Community College. Both of these will take approved FEMA courses and put them on a transcript which you can then transfer to Excelsior.

Frederick Community College

To transfer your credits with Frederick Community College, you'll need to "buy" each of the courses you've already completed at http://em-study.com/emsfema/. Just click on the "Buy Courses" tab and then select each of the courses you've already passed on the FEMA site. You did keep track, right? Each of them will run you $76, so once again... Check with your Excelsior advisor and get it in writing that each will count. Do not buy a course that won't count. It's a waste of money.

Once you buy the courses you've already completed, they'll be sent to Frederick Community College and within a few weeks will be ready for transcription. From there it's just a matter of requesting FCC to send a copy of the transcript to Excelsior.

Clackamas Community College

Clackamas, besides having a really fun name, may be a better choice for some people when it comes to transferring credits to another school. They do have some limitations that are important to note. Keeping with our Excelsior example, this is the process:

Once you've finished your FEMA courses and received your certificates by Email, head over to the Clackamas (love that name) website and download a copy of their Emergency Management AAS Overview What you're looking for on this page is all of the courses with a "F" in the first column. Those are our FEMA courses and the ones they'll accept. If you look at the end of the course title, you'll see the corresponding IS numbers. Please keep in mind that just because Clackamas accepts them does not mean your school will. You need to check.

Let's use the first five courses on that list for our example. You'll notice they're all FEMA courses and all part of the same class. Here's the great part about Clackamas - Instead of a per credit basis, you pay per class. Even better? You only pay $30 per class. If Excelsior would accept (and I don't know if they will) those first five courses, you could pick up 5-6 credits of classes from FEMA and Clackamas for only $30. Doesn't sound like too bad of a deal, does it? The same courses at Frederick would cost you over $350. I'm not going to bold it this time, but I will say it - Check with your advisor that the class will be accepted before paying any money. I'm going to beat that dead horse into a bloody mess.

When the approved courses have all been identified, you'll then download a copy of their Emergency Management Registration Form, fill it out, and attach a copy of each certificate that you'd like to register. You can use as many pages of the form as you need to. Once that's done, you attach either a check or credit card authorization form for $30 per class included and mail it to:

If you want to double check that address (I would) and see the information page for Clackamas and their FEMA process, you can do so on the Criminal Justice/Emergency Management page. At the bottom, you'll see the address. You'll also see the Email and number for a Mrs. Dianna Shepherd which, for the moment, is 503-594-3366. After speaking with her today, I can assure you that she's a very friendly lady who knows this process backwards and forwards. She answered quite a few questions I had when typing this section up.

Once the courses have been registered with Clackamas, it's a simple matter of requesting a transcript to be sent to your school of choice.

So now the limitations with Clackamas - First, the time involved. You're mailing these in and the registration periods for transcription seem to be operated on a quarterly basis. By the time the courses are registered, received, transcribed and a copy of the transcript is sent out, some time may pass. If you're in a rush, it could be a concern. Secondly, you can only register 18 credits worth of FEMA courses per quarter. This probably isn't that big of a deal for most people, but it's something to note.

Whichever school you decide to use to transcribe those FEMA courses, the important thing to remember is that the school you actually attend has the final say on what credits they'll accept. Do not waste your money registering credits that won't transfer. Last time I'll beat that horse, I promise. :P

Summary

FEMA courses can be a great way to fill out some free electives for a degree. There are even degrees out there like Emergency Management and some courses from FCC and Clackamas that are done almost entirely with these courses. Even if you're not going for something specifically in this field, there's a use for almost any situation.

If you're going to TESC and need some additional elective credits, this is truly a no-brainer in my opinion. They cost nothing but time and not too much of that.

If you're going to another school, you may want to weigh the benefits with the cost. If your testing center is 100 miles away and gives tests once a month, then the savings in time and gas money may be enough to justify that hefty transcription fee. Otherwise, another few CLEPs or DSST's will probably be your best bet.

Finally, I'd like to thank the people at Degreeinfo.com and Degreeforum.net for providing much of the research material for this page. I didn't use FEMA courses during my own degree, so I walked into this with the barest of knowledge. After slogging through hundreds of posts stretching back over eight years, I think I have a better grasp of the subject now and it's thanks to the many contributors on those forums. Hopefully we've done a decent job of gathering all of that in one place. I suppose time will tell. ;)